December 3, 2016

Greetings fellow gamers! Hope you had a fun and happy Thanksgiving! Besides consuming unhealthy levels of turkey and stuffing, the lads from Toxic Bag were fortunate to attend all three days of the Chicago Tardis Convention. This show, held in Lombard, IL, is one of the largest Doctor Who conventions in the midwest. Here’s a quick recap of the 72 hours of all things Who.

It was really great to get a chance to meet all of these folks from the early days of Doctor Who. All of them had great stories about William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker. Most of them are currently working with Big Finish to produce new Doctor Who audio adventures as well!

Peter Purves and Anneke Wills discuss working with the original Doctor, William Hartnell.

We were able to load up on autographs from all of these lovely folks! I had them sign my vintage Spirit of Light portraits while Joe had a cool picture of all the incarnations of the Tardis. Our friend Jodi presented them with an actual Tardis for signing.

Anneke Wills getting ready to sign my portraits of Doctor’s one and two.

The highlight of the autograph sessions was a moment where Jodi and I made uncomfortable small talk with Wendy Padbury. We had just gotten Wendy’s autograph and both had tickets for Deborah Watling. However, we had to wait for her to finish up. So there we were, staring at Wendy Padbury. After a few seconds of painful silence, Wendy finally said “So…are you from around here?” Since both Jodi and I felt that this wasn’t the time to launch into a complex Doctor Who question, we just responded with “yup, Chicago.” Before Wendy could ask us what our favorite cheese is, or something equally trivial, Deborah finished up and we thankfully moved on. Wendy handled it great, and made the best of a truly strange moment! I can’t believe that I got to make uncomfortable small talk with Wendy Padbury; Zoe of Doctor Who! So I got that going for me, which is nice…

There were several really cool panels. We got to hear some great stories of how 1960’s television was made and the problems these actors and artists had to deal with. Peter Purves, who was on the show for the third season back in 1965, told us that back then, they didn’t have the budget to stop the action and edit. So, they basically had to perform these shows like a stage play. No stopping, if an actor forgot a line, they had to get back on track on their own! It’s almost hard to believe that they did it that way, but that’s the BBC in the 1960’s for you!

The Big Finish guys also had a great panel where they broke down how they produced their audio adventures, and also discussed the future of Big Finish.